Originally Posted by
anndelise
I read a book which goes into this, I think the book is called the belief instinct, by Jesse Bering. Basically, when we try to imagine what death is like, we can't imagine it without also bringing our sense of consciousness into it...because we are using that to imagine it. we ask ourselves what it would feel like...as if we could feel something after death. We formulate a theory of mind of a dead person, as if we would have a mind to think with. We do similar when we try to understand the experience of a plant, such as a tree. And we used to do theory of mind for the wind, volcanoes, earthquakes, etc. It's a major factor in how we developed a theory of mind for creation, and later called it god(s).